Sandy Lerner
Owner, Ayrshire Farm. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderengineerauthorotherayrshirefarm.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
In 1984, Lerner co-founded Cisco Systems alongside Leonard Bosack, helping commercialize early multi-protocol routers. She later launched the cosmetics brand Urban Decay, established the humane agricultural estate Ayrshire Farm, and authored the Jane Austen sequel Second Impressions.
1shows
2appearances
50statements
18resolved
10supported
4contradicted
56%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Sandy Lerner said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Lerner sold Urban Decay because cosmetics lack intellectual property protection
“Oh, I, for the simple reason that there's no intellectual property. You can't patent color.”
Lerner says farming is harder than building tech or graduate physics
“Farming is the hardest thing I've ever done. Much, much harder than learning calculus as a graduate student and, you know, physics and the rest of all of that stuff. It's much, much, much harder than anything I've done, and it takes more work. And more heartac…”
Cisco survived multiple near-collapses through sheer luck, Lerner says
“There were so many times that company could have gone under, and we were saved by circumstances out of our control. So there was huge luck in there.”
Stanford peer created first spell checker by manually typing entire dictionary
“One of the people had written the first spell checker and typed in the entire dictionary himself.”
Stanford router project began as an unauthorized shadow network by Cisco founders
“Officially? Absolutely not. We were definitely under the radar, and we kept it under the radar, and it wasn't until one day, I think it was by, Became the Stanford University Network.”
Lerner: Early ARPA networking work had no financial motive
“We did it because it was the right thing to do. ARPA was giving money. It was all public, public domain. Nobody had a financial motive.”
Lerner: Stanford refused to license early router technology
“But Stanford said, no, you cannot license this technology. They would not entertain any licensing. We had done our part, and we had taken the government's money. This is all public domain. We'd invented all of these wonderful things, but the Office of Technolo…”
Stanford paid Lerner half her predecessor's salary and one-third her successor's
“I mean, I was paid half of what my predecessor made, and I was paid a third of what my successor was paid.”
Lerner: Cisco settled with Stanford via product royalties and 3-year network maintenance
“We ended up paying them, I think, a very fair royalty for the first Gosh, I want to say three million dollars a product or something. Very fair royalty. And we had to fix their network for three years.”
Lerner: All cosmetic brands use identical base ingredients
“Everybody uses the same stuff. It's just how they put it together and what they're willing to pay for.”
Lerner sold Urban Decay because cosmetic colors cannot be patented
“Oh, I, for the simple reason that there's no intellectual property. You can't patent color.”
Stanford peer wrote the first spell checker and manually typed the dictionary
“One of the people had written the first spell checker and typed in the entire dictionary himself.”
Stanford Ethernet precursor ran under the radar until around 1981
“We were definitely under the radar, and we kept it under the radar, and it wasn't until One day, I think it was by 1981, our time-sharing Ethernet became the Stanford University Network.”
Cisco was the 36th name attempted for the networking company
“Cisco was actually the 36th name that we tried to get. Anything having to do with computers, we couldn't have.”
Early Cisco booked $250,000 monthly without a dedicated sales force
“With no sales force, we were booking a quarter million dollars a month.”
Cisco pitched 70 to 80 venture investors in early fundraising efforts
“We went through about 70 or 80 of them.”
Sandy Lerner launched Urban Decay in three months with only $50,000
“Makeup's a very easy thing. You can do it three weeks. We're on the shelf in three months. You know, just add 50,000 dollars and stir.”
Lerner: Cisco booked $250K monthly by 1987 without a sales team
“By 1987, with no sales force, we were booking a quarter million dollars a month.”
Lerner: Cisco pitched 70 to 80 venture investors before raising funding
“We went through about 70 or 80 of them.”
Lerner: Bosack and Lerner donated 70% of Cisco exit proceeds
“Remember that right after that, Len and I put 70% of the proceeds into charitable vehicles.”
Lerner's 1970s bank employer made tellers kneel for skirt length checks
“The bank owner made all of the tellers kneel, so he could check that our skirts were long enough, and he called us all Louise.”
Lerner earned $25 per hour programming computers as a student in 1975
“And, you know, in 1975, I was making 25 bucks an hour computer programming.”
Cisco's first three customers were HP Labs, Rutgers, and Boeing
“Our first customer was Hewlett Packard Laboratories. The second one was Rutgers University. Third one was Boeing.”
The other half of the tape: Sandy Lerner's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 1
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Sandy's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Owner, Ayrshire Farm | 2 | 50 | 56% 10/18 | full record on How I Built This → |